MY COMMUNITY BOARD

"Our main interest in this analysis is to try to explore some of the forms and methods of interventions that different political actors or power structures can use to control and conquer online sphere. Here we will mostly speak about hidden, indirect actions, interventions done by the unknown actors, individuals with hidden or fake identities, companies without visible ties to government officials, political troll armies and troll lords, or even “artificial” entities.As usual in our investigations we will try to quantify and visualise some of those forms and try to detect and understand some patterns."

A small starting experimental project on the new concept of pleasure media and (un)learning photography that we are exploring done by our students here in Kathmandu. The pleasure media concept started to emerge at our 2016 Memefest titled "Pleasure". We are now spending a three week workshop with students from various backgrounds in Kathmandu to explore - what we see as a new media concept further. This are some early explorations. More to come!

You will remember our last big Memefest titled PLEASURE. So here we go:

"For many of her clientele, who are almost exclusively white right-wing men because she finds herself unable 'to be even fictionally cruel to any other type of man,' that fetish is serving a powerful woman. Maybury derives her pleasure comes from forcing those men to see the contradiction between their love of powerful women and their support for political parties that actively work to limit women’s rights and empowerment."

This is fantastic evidence in showing how brands can be hacked and used a vehicles for political campaigns. The article reveals how Cambridge Analytica has "Waponized" brands in order to promote Donald Trump. The key question opened for me is: Can we reverse engineer the process and use brands to influence social change? What is highly interesting here is the use of fashion as s key cultural medium.

Back from our magic trip in south Italy, where we were taking part of the festival "The Land of Bread" in Matera, presenting the ideas behind our Food Democracy book in a festival lecture and three Lipstick+Bread workshops. One of the many amazing parts was visiting Lecce and a small village next to it where we were hosted for several days by the beautiful family of our fratello Antonio Rollo. The video is from a while ago and shows the father, mother and daughter making incredible breads at the only community oven in the village they have been running for many years. Just amazing!! The breads, bread dishes, the tomatoes, sardines, pasta and the olive oil(!!!) we ate were pure heaven and this unique culture of baking, bread making and food, music, friendship and hospitality will be for ever cherished in our memories. More soon!

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'Advertising companies and data brokers have been quietly collecting, analysing, trading, and selling data on people for decades. What has changed is the granularity and invasiveness at which this is possible. Data brokers buy your personal data from companies you do business with; collect data such as web browsing histories from a range of sources; combine it with other information about you (such as magazine subscriptions, public government records, or purchasing histories); and sell their insights to anyone that wants to know more about you.'

Please share this and spread the news into the data sphere as far as possible!! I met Shahidul Alam two years ago in Kathmandu where we worked together with photography students at a international workshop. Shahidul is a one of a kind media and human rights activist, the founder of Pathshala Media Institute in Dhaka, one of the best photography schools in the world and a brilliant photographer.

Additional Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DB) Abdul Baten said a team of Detective Branch of police detained Shahidul from his Dhanmondi residence for interrogation over his Facebook posts on the ongoing student protests................................................................Internationally renowned photographer Dr Shahidul Alam, Managing Director, Drik, was forcibly abducted from his house in Dhanmondi, Dhaka after 10pm on 5 Aug 2018. According to security guards of the apartment building and other eyewitness reports, there were roughly 30 to 35 men, in plain clothes, who claimed to be from the Detective Branch (DB), who went upstairs, brought down Dr Alam, who was screaming as he was forcibly pushed into the waiting car, a HiAce, with the words Popular Life Insurance, written on the outside. They taped up the CCTV camera, and took away the CCTV camera footage. The guards were manhandled and locked up. His partner Rahnuma Ahmed, was in a neigbouring flat, raced downstairs on hearing the scream, but the car carrying him and two other cars waiting outside, sped away.

An exciting new theory, one that again shows that it is collaboration, not competition that is responsible for success of human development and prosperity. Even more so, it shows the role women and especially grandmothers play in making us being successful.

Important reading and highly relevant to us at Memefest. I still remember talking to a large audience of activists and critical and engaged creatives and asking them why are almost all using Facebook instead of this social network we have established at Memefest and it made me a bit sad to see how powerful FB is to interrelate even this fantastic folks. But the story has not ended yet and we are ready to make the next step and will let you know more about it soon. In this process, this new book by Geert Lovink and Ned Rositer is an important and useful guide.

Organization after Social Media by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter

Here the blurb:" Exploring the politics of networks through and beyond social media

Organized networks are an alternative to the social media logic of weak links and their secretive economy of data mining. They put an end to freestyle friends, seeking forms of empowerment beyond the brief moment of joyful networking. This speculative manual calls for nothing less than social technologies based on enduring time. Analyzing contemporary practices of organization through networks as new institutional forms, organized networks provide an alternative to political parties, trade unions, NGOs, and traditional social movements. Dominant social media deliver remarkably little to advance decision-making within digital communication infrastructures. The world cries for action, not likes.

Organization after Social Media explores a range of social settings from arts and design, cultural politics, visual culture and creative industries, disorientated education and the crisis of pedagogy to media theory and activism. Lovink and Rossiter devise strategies of commitment to help claw ourselves out of the toxic morass of platform suffocation."

Five years ago we printed this beautiful Food Democracy posters for Memefest 2013. Now the Food democracy book shows the process of the festival on the topic with additional research. Published a few months ago the book is getting more and more interest, and we truly love the work we have done.If you haven't yet, check it out here:http://www.memefest.org/en/fooddemocracy/

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More than two years ago i saw the first ASMR video. The somehow creepy videos where someone whispers, and touches objects and this is recorded by very good microphones causing a sensation of special pleasure. It is pretty fascinating as a marketing strategy as well as brands use it to sell their products.